The internet is full of various strategies,hints,cheats and other material to help you pass the lab. Many of the are gimmicks used to get prospective students to send money for an "easy pass" solution to the lab. Ask anyone who has tried that route and I'm sure your going to find out that thier success rate was low. What you need is a peer reviewed and tested method for preparing for the lab.

Well here's your chance to tell others what you have done to help pass, or what things you feel are helpful, and quite frankly what things to stay away from. As will all thread, lets try to keep this civil and avoid vendor wars! Just honest feedback on what did and didnt work for you and why.

What helped me pass my CCIE security was mainly havig a good basis in security studying and passing the CCSP classes. I can't see how could someone have a shortcut for this lab, you just have to do tons of labs and understand the technology well.

I didn't have to ready as many books as I did in the R&S. I relied mostly on the CCO documentation and a good workbook.

In my opinion, one of the most important things I learned from preparing for the lab exam is that, speed kills. After my first lab attempt I started using what I called "speed drills". These were exercises in setting up a particular solution or solutions in a predetermined amount of time. Knowing the technology is one thing, configuring and testing under specific time constraints is another. Be prepared. Be fast.

Now I am preparing the CCIE security Lab exam.I think the most important part is security related theoretics. So I wanna read through some documents before doing the practice .In this way,we can know what`s wrong it is ASAP when we meet some troubles in Lab,and we can find out the suitable solution to fix it in document or cisco website. That`s my opinion.I am very glad to receive some mails from you,friends.

For me the best thing I did to help pass the lab was to use a vendor workbook. I prefer IPExpert myself. In previous attempts I didn't have problems so much with the technology, but rather what they were actually asking. I spent the better part of 3 months doing every lab I could as often as I could. I spent time thinking about why the question was phrased the way it was. I also went through the config guide and compared notes and when I would fine what I thought was an error, I would go and do as much reading as I could on the subject. That helped me to really drill down on why something was right (or sometimes wrong)

Looking back now I can see that most of the questions I had during my failed attempts were more about really understanding what they were asking. In my final attempt (2+ years ago) I didn't have any questions about what they were asking or wanting and found myself usually finishing up reading each section with knowing exactly what they were trying to see if I knew.

I now find myself beginning prep for the CCDE since I'm actually suspended on my IE and need to recert before to long or I'll loose it. I'm hoping that the same thing that helped me pass the IE will help me pass the DE.

I deem that CCIE Security is one of the best certifications but it is only a certification as well. It only show you have a good basis of network security.

For young engineers who don`t have some years work experience,he or she can not solve the issue occur in real or detail environment.But when the old engineers told him or her the reason,he or she can understand it immediately.In next time,when he or she meet the similar issue,he or she can remember the reason and solve it rapidly,because he or she know the why it occur. Pls give them some time

two month of very intense preparation (got "free" from work from my employer and could basically learn from the morning to late at night) creation of a "knowledgebase", where a added every bit of information I didn't knew before, or was hard to "get" and understand, and was worth noting. I think this is a must for two reasons: first you memorize things better and easier when repeating them and putting them into your own words and writing them down, secondly it's good stuff to go through all this again shortly before the lab to see again all "pain-points" you had and their solution

the 10 mock-labs from internetwork-expert (very valuable!), which are harder than the real one to my mind - together with a real lab where you can train of course

a great day on the day of your exam, where you are relaxed, not too nervous, confident and having the support of your friends and family in your background.

It's really hard to give students recommendations of specific topics, because the lab exam covers a very wide range of topics. This is why I recommend the IE-labs, because those are very similar in this regard. In each and every lab you have a section for firewalling, one for vpn, one for ips, aaa, etc. The real lab exam is very much like that. So you need all these areas and I would recommend to do all the given scenarios, to get the picture.

I did not do any other labs that the 10 IE-labs. I think (better: I know) that after doing just those 10 labs, the exam is very much achievable. Apart from that, the exam is very much a mindgame. It's about not letting nervousity guide you, but try to be calm and still think logic and step-by-step. E.g., I had one task where I had a security-technology preconfigured, and I had to find several

mistakes and correct them so that the setup actually works. This was a challenging task, because you can't just go on typing like you did in your exercises perhaps, but you have to get calm, read through the config, compare, debug things, and

narrow down the different problems to eliminate them. This can't be done in a rush, if you know what I mean.